Over the past twenty-five years or so, the primary challenge of very large scale integration (VLSI) has been the integration of an ever-increasing number of metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) devices with high yield and reliability. This was achieved mainly in the prior art by scaling down the MOSFET channel length without excessive short-channel effects. As is known to those skilled in the art, short-channel effects are the decrease of threshold voltage Vt in short-channel devices due to two-dimensional electrostatic charge sharing between the gate and the source/drain diffusion regions.
To scale down MOSFET channel lengths without excessive short-channel effects, gate oxide thickness has to be reduced while increasing channel-doping concentration. However, Yan, et al., “Scaling the Si MOSFET: From bulk to SOI to bulk”, IEEE Trans. Elect. Dev., Vol. 39, p. 1704, July 1992, have shown that to reduce short-channel effects for sub-0.05 μm MOSFETs, it is important to have a backside-conducting layer present in the structure that screens the drain field away from the channel. The Yan, et al. results show that double-gated MOSFETs and MOSFETs with a top gate and a backside ground plane are more immune to short-channel effects and hence can be scaled to shorter dimensions than conventional MOSFETs.
The structure of a typical prior art double-gated MOSFET consists of a very thin vertical Si layer (Fin) for the channel, with two gates, one on each side of the channel. The term “Fin” is used herein to denote a semiconducting material which is employed as the body of the FET. The two gates are electrically connected so that they serve to modulate the channel. Short-channel effects are greatly suppressed in such a structure because the two gates very effectively terminate the drain field line preventing the drain potential from being felt at the source end of the channel. Consequently, the variation of the threshold voltage with drain voltage and with gate length of a prior art double-gated MOSFET is much smaller than that of a conventional single-gated structure of the same channel length.
One problem with prior art structures which comprise symmetric polysilicon gates on a FinFET is that the symmetric polysilicon gate FinFET structure will result in threshold voltages that are not compatible with existing CMOS circuit designs. For example, the NFET threshold voltage will be negative and the PFET will be quite positive. A potential solution to this problem is using a symmetric metal gate. Integration and processing difficulty has, however, made the development of a metal gate FinFET quite slow.
Another possible solution is an asymmetric doped polysilicon gate where one side of the Fin (i.e., thin film semiconducting layer) includes an N+ doped polysilicon gate and the other side of the Fin includes a P+ doped polysilicon gate. This asymmetry has been shown to shift threshold voltages to CMOS compatible levels in planar double-gate devices as well as FinFETs. Most prior art methods to integrate this asymmetry require sidewall image transfer and other difficult processing schemes. Moreover, in the prior art asymmetric polysilicon gate structures, thin polysilicon gates are employed. A problem with such structures is that thin polysilicon gates result in highly resistive gate electrodes. Additionally, the aspect ratio of the structures having thin gate electrodes makes the gate etch extremely difficult.
In view of the above-mentioned problems with prior art FinFET structures; there is a continued need for developing a new and improved asymmetric polysilicon (polySi)-containing gate. FinFET structure in which the threshold voltage is compatible with current CMOS circuit designs and where low resistive gate electrodes are realized.